SparkFun Level Translator Breakout – PCA9306

There are a couple of must-have boards that every engineer and hobbyist should have on their desk, and this PCA9306 dual, bidirectional voltage-level translator breakout is one of them! Because different parts sometimes use different voltage levels to communicate, voltage-level translators can be the key to making different parts play nice.

The PCA9306 is a dual bidirectional I2C-bus and SMBus voltage-level translator that’s operational on the low side from 1.2V to 3.3V and on the high side from 1.8V to 5.5V. Simply apply your low and high-side reference voltages to the VREF1 and VREF2 respectively, connect your I/O and drive the Enable pin high to open bidirectional voltage translation without the use of a direction pin!

We’ve updated this classic board to use a new footprint as well as adding a second ground pin and breaking out the enable pin.

Get started with the Sparkfun PCA9306 Logic Level translator guide

Resources

• Schematic
• Eagle Files
• Hookup Guide
• Datasheet (PCA9306DC)
• GitHub Hardware Repo